Michael Den Tandt: This scandal will linger even after Duffy's departure from the Conservative caucus

Mike Duffy may go, but the mess will linger for the PMO

“There’s blood in the water,” as a former editor of mine used to say, cheerfully, whenever a story like this came along. All that’s left now is to watch how many get eaten and in what order. This is Ottawa at its most brutal. The Harper Conservatives know the phenomenon well, having delighted in it when they were in opposition. They expect no quarter, and will be given none.

Conservative Senator Mike Duffy has resigned from the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent amid a furious controversy over his expense claims.

Only a week ago, the Conservative government was hailing Duffy’s leadership for repaying the $90,000 in housing allowances the Senate said he owed.

Now a government official says there are a growing number of questions about Duffy’s conduct that don’t have answers.

The imbroglio ensnared Stephen Harper’s highest-ranking adviser after it came to light that the prime minister’s chief of staff Nigel Wright wrote a personal cheque to Duffy to cover the bill.

The Prime Minister’s Office, in testudo formation, appears to be steeling itself for a long siege. It could spare itself the trouble and cut to the denouement: Sen. Mike Duffy is already gone, out of the Tory caucus as of late Thursday. Chief of Staff Nigel Wright is next in line. Prime Minister Stephen Harper hits “reset” on his office and then on his government, with a far-reaching cabinet shuffle, as has long been planned. Then they pray for a break on pipelines, and trade.

Those are the PM’s best options, under the circumstances. But even if he moves surgically and swiftly, this mess doesn’t go away, as others have. The reason is simply that the government, at its highest level, appears to have condoned deception and fraud. Or, as people who “work hard and play by the rules” might express it: lying and theft. True-blue Conservatives in Alberta, in rural and small-town Ontario, indeed everywhere, will be staring Ottawa-ward and wondering: What the hell?

This scandal of a kind has never before come close to touching the prime minister, personally. Though Harper’s office says he didn’t know his most senior aide had personally cut Duffy a cheque for $90,172, to reimburse the Treasury for the latter’s improper housing allowance claims, the flechettes are parting the PM’s hair. It doesn’t matter, really, if he knew or didn’t. His office wields more power than any PMO in Canadian history and the most powerful man in the room, other than Harper himself, is Wright. He is an instrument of the prime minister. What touches one necessarily touches the other.

No taxpayer money or Conservative party money was spent? Well, yes. It’s true enough, if the PMO’s narrative is accurate, that this was Wright’s personal money, from his personal bank account. It was a gift. But on what strange and magical planet can they be living, to imagine that makes it appropriate? Is it Pandora? If anything the gifting makes it worse. Why would Wright do such an extraordinary thing? What was the quid pro quo?

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The quid pro quo matters, after all. In 2009 former prime minister Brian Mulroney was pilloried, then set on an ice floe and gently pushed seaward by the current prime minister, for having accepted large cash payments from a German businessman, Karlheinz Schreiber, after he, Mulroney, left office. The reason this was so controversial – the heart of that scandal – was the lack of clarity about what the former PM did in exchange for the money.

Rules have been broken. The Senate Conflict of Interest Code is pellucid on this point: “neither a Senator, nor a family member, shall accept, directly or indirectly, any gift or other benefit, except compensation authorized by law, that could reasonably be considered to relate to the Senator’s position.” The exception is when a gift is given as “a normal expression of courtesy or protocol, or within the customary standards of hospitality that normally accompany the Senator’s position.” Do not expect Wright, Duffy or the PMO to try to explain how Wright’s gift didn’t break those rules. The reason is that, based on any common-sense reading, they can’t.

Worst of all is the deception, piled on deception. It begins with Duffy being appointed a senator from P.E.I. when he is, in fact, from Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa. It continues with his claiming the up-to-$22,000 annual Senate living allowance that he was not entitled to claim. It further continues with his saying in February, with an air of stiff righteousness, that after talking it over with his wife he had decided to return the money. That decision, we now know, was made only after the senator was assured by the prime minister’s chief of staff that it would not cost him a penny. This is not King Leonidas sacrificing himself for Sparta.

Then comes more deception, this time from the government. Duffy showed “leadership,” in repaying taxpayers, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan claimed in the House of Commons last week. The truth would be safely obscured in the fog, even now, had CTV’s Bob Fife not broken this story Tuesday. The subsequent confirmatory statement from the PMO Wednesday was forced. On Bay Street this is known as “taking a writedown.” When bad news is inevitable you get it out there, assume the fetal position, and let the blows rain down.

Even in Ottawa, encased as it is in a scabrous shell of permanent cynicism, this doesn’t pass. It is shameful, and sad. Stephen Harper’s 30-year-old self, if he were around, would be beside himself with fury – and in the vanguard of those demanding better.